The Navy Thread

China Launches Its First Home Built Aircraft Carrier.

Name is rumored to be Shandong.

This means officially the PLAN is now more powerful than the Royal Navy. How the mighty have fallen.

Breaking News! Russian Warship Collides With Freighter In Black Sea.

Details still coming in.

Russian Sailors: 0 African livestock: 1

Although there is also the weird and possibly true story of how a Russian cow sank a Japanese fishing boat.

Is that how they ended up in Tsushima?

Considering that the British seem to be content spending the new millennium shitting themselves, that's not saying a whole lot.

Re: zoo onboard submarines

Come to think of it, having a chicken coop and a pig pen provides the vessel with its own self-sustaining meat supply. After all, it's what all ships had prior to the invention of the steam engine IIRC.

Update. The freighter was full of Hungarian sheep.

Liman was sunk by a ewe boat!

Oh lord that was bad. :P

In the time of war (and peace) the task of sinking the Russian fleet is one better left for the Russian fleet itself.

Japan's Biggest Helicopter Carrier Helicopter Destroyer To Provide Escort For US Supply Ship.

I for one approve of the new militant Japan. Especially considering the selfish imperialist actions of the Chinese and dangerously unpredictable nature of Best Korea. And unlike last time Japan got all military, this time around we're on the same side.

edited 1st May '17 6:52:50 PM by MajorTom

It does mark the second time Japan will be fighting on the side of a burgeoning fascist dictatorship.

Japan just can't win.

Given that the Commander In Chief of the US Navy is Donald 'Sudden Tweet Bomb' Trump, I'm not sure who's the real dangerously unpredictable.

I mean, North Korea has been predictably crazy as of late

The SM-6 or RIM-174 Standard ERAM Has successfully completed it's last round of tests. This is the US Navy missile that was breaking records for intercepts last year. They have used it to shoot down everything from short range super sonic missiles, sub-sonic cruise missiles, aircraft, Medium Range Ballistic Missiles, and even sank an old Oliver Hazard Perry Guided Missile Frigate.

The US has already cleared it for export to Japan, Australia, and South Korea.

Yet more bad news for the LCS program. Boeing has canceled work on a variant of Harpoon for the ship class. This likely means that Lock-Mart's LRASM and Raytheon-Kongsberg Naval Strike Missile are the only real options open to take its place now.

edited 4th May '17 4:12:12 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Today in Navy history 75 years ago: The Battle of the Coral Sea. The first Midway-style carrier engagement before there was the Battle of Midway. While largely inconclusive (strategic US victory though) as both sides suffered similar losses it proved the Imperial Japanese Navy was Not So Invincible After All and set the stage for the decisive action a month later off Midway Atoll.

Nifty note: Most of the newspapers in the US didn't really cover Coral Sea, instead they were obsessing over the Fall of Corregidor which had just happened as well.

Also because of damage to their air wings, both Shokaku and Zuikaku were therefore not available to sortie with the rest of the Kido Butai that had hit Pearl Harbor and was sent to Midway. It's highly likely that if they were there and were wiped out with the rest of the Kido Butai all at once it probably would have changed the war that much more. Instead Shokaku and Zuikaku would keep up the rivalry with their other pre-war counterparts in the US Navy the Enterprise and Hornet until 1944. (Enterprise being the last one floating.)

If the USN ever decide to fire the SM-6 on ground targets then it will be officially the anti-everything missile.

Well, that and if it can engage targets underwater.

Apparently back in December they found a fix for the Zummwalts problems. They did test the craft at Bath Ironworks but the problem cropped up underway. They changed a few things to do with cooling systems and gave it two underway tests to be sure. It is now undergoing weapon test firings as part of the ships activation. It will fire its guns and SM-2 missiles.

The US navy is also reportedly testing software and hardware on one of their UAV designs including data links.

edited 8th May '17 7:20:18 PM by TuefelHundenIV

The US marines have recently tested a large array of technologies and devices during a large scale exercise to determine what equipment they may want or need in the near future. This included several varieties of remotely operated vehicles including a an automated landing unit, several UGV's, assorted UAV's, and other tech.

edited 13th May '17 6:20:29 AM by TuefelHundenIV

So the US has upgraded its "Quick Strike" aerial delivered shallow water sea mines with various bits of off the shelf modern kit. There are two general variants of the new mines the first is called Quick Strike-J which uses a new MK-71 Sea Mine Fuse also called the Mark 71 TDD (Target Detection Device) developed for this role, JDAM guidance package, and either a 1,000 lb or 2,000lb "Iron Bomb" body. This variant is colloquially named "Skipjack". The second variant makes use of JDAM-ER which is JDAM with a glide wing kit attached it uses the same fuse but is intended for use on 500lb and 1,000lb bomb bodies instead. This is the GBU-62B(V-1)/B or as the "Flounder". The aerial mines dimensions are almost identical to the JDAM family of bombs and has been tested off of B-1, B-52, and F-18 (Regular) aircraft. Any craft capable of carrying JDAM should be able to carry these weapons as well.

The US Navy also has a torpedo based shallow water mine called the MK-67 SLMM(Submarine Launched Mobile Mine) which is a modified MK-37 Torpedo. Basically a torpedo that carries a mine weapon to a designated location and lays the mine. The US and Australia are working together in a joint project to replace it with a more advanced variant called the ISLMM that uses a MK-47 Torpedo with a dual warhead to enable it to mine multiple locations at once or lay both warheads in the same location.

These new mines are in part a desire to update the older munitions but also in response to increasing aggression of large regional Naval powers like China but could also be used against North Korea and Iran.

The way the mines would be used would be to deploy them in enemy harbors, near submarine pens, choke points, and enemy sea lanes to interdict Naval traffic. The strategic use is to serve to disrupt commerce traffic and complicate military naval navigation.

edited 13th May '17 7:34:25 AM by TuefelHundenIV

Rear Adm. Robert Gilbeau sentenced to 18 months in prison for his part in the "Fat Leonard" bribery scandal. He will also serve three years of probation, work 300 hours of community service and pay the Navy $150,000 in restitution and fines.

edited 18th May '17 7:59:58 PM by AFP

Well seen he's going to do less than half the maximum sentence for being an odiously corrupt son of a bitch who's brought the Navy into disrepute. I hope he's being cashiered out as well.

[EDIT] If he's active the Navy can strip him of benefits per the UCMJ and the Manual of Courts Martial. Or Sec Nav can just wave him. Horrid Holly Graf got to keep her pension. The only thing that saved her is that she didn't kill anyone.

The "Fat Leonard" scandal is the worst Navy scandal, since Teapot Dome.

edited 24th May '17 11:42:35 PM by TairaMai

What A 21st Century Battleship Could Look Like.

It's a start.

Pedantic nitpick to start off for the article: Montana and Hawaii are not the only states not to have battleships named for them. Alaska similarly shares that honor, for the same reason as Hawaii - neither state had achieved statehood yet when the US stopped building battleships.

There was USS Alaska, a Battlecr- er - Large Cruiser, but she lacked the heavy armor (and for the time period, the heavy armament) of a true battleship, being fitted with a battery of 12 inch guns vs the 16 inch guns carried by her contemporaries in the Iowa class battleships. There had been plans for a USS Hawaii (and a USS The Phillippines) from that same class, but it got cancelled with the end of the war.

edited 1st Jun '17 8:31:51 AM by AFP

So scale the Zumwalt up to Cruiser weights and give it a nuke plant and future tech and pretend it is a battleship instead of another GMC.